Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

The course will provide students with a foundation in law and society in Asia, as one of the most important, but also challenged and challenging, area in the world today. Our objective is to facilitate a critical understanding of how law operates in Asian societies, and to prepare students for future ingagement with the legal-political systems of (selected) Asian countries in various professional contexts.

In particular, the course will focus on China and India, two emerging economies with enormous populations and potentials — and two societies building on historical and cultural heritages going back thousands of years.

The goal is to make the students familiar with the following topics:

- What observers of cultures and trends mean when they say that the 21st century will belong Asia? Is that correct to discuss the current economic prosperity of many Asian nation, using the label "Asia", "Asian Values", etc., to refer to specific qualities, such as strong family ties, hard work, etc? How the inherent cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and social diversity of Asia fits in with the world's perception of Asia as a cultural unit?

- India and the rise of social and religious reform movements of the 19th century; how these cultural ideals continue to influence the current literary, political discourse in this country?

- Legal Orientalism and China

- Chinese socio-legal history

- Relationship among law, society, culture and ideology in a socialist market economy

- Have acquired a sound knowledge of Asian legal systems and an understanding of their origins and functions.
- Be able to evaluate the role of   Asian legal, political and cultural spaces as means of achieving social change and social justice.
- Be able to illustrate how Asian laws are embedded in social life and to identify the nexus between law and culture, identity, religion, economy, and politics.
- Be able carry out interdisciplinary analysis of Asian legal issues, with an appropriate awareness of the purposes and limits of such a methodological approach.
- Have acquired a deeper knowledge of various social science approaches to research into Asian laws, and an understanding of their usefulness in relation to more narrowly legal approaches.

 

Lectures (36 hours - 6 CFU) with the support of powerpoint presentations. The slides of the lessons and the related materials will be uploaded to the Moodle platform in advance, in orderd to allow the students to prepare themselves on the topic that will be discussed during the class.

 

Students will take the exam in written form. For the students who will attend the course, the final mark, expressed in a 30-point scale, will be composed as follows:
- Attendance and class participation: 20%
- Two Reading Assignments and Group Presentations 20% each = 40%
- Final Essay: 40 %

Students who decide not to attend the course should contact the professor(s) in order to define the basic conditions for the exam.

 

The course will analyze provisions, sources and contents of international human rights law in Asia including:

- the question of cultural relativism;
- regional and sub-regional level institutional cooperative efforts;
- Asian contribution to the human rights regime;
- incorporation of international human rights norms into domestic legal settings.
In particular, it  will focus on:
1. Different legal systems approach to human rights;
2. Framing Empire: Law, People and Institution;
3. Law and Colonial Modernity & Law, People and Colonialism;
4. Colonizing Law;
5. Administering Law;
6. Engagement: Law Reform;
7. Law and Knowledge Production;
8. Law and Colonial Encounter;
9. Constitutionalism and rule of law;
10. Domestic treatment of international human rights law in Asia

 

Texts and documents will be communicated before the beginning of the course.